Washington -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- On the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington on Saturday , the first sight on the National Mall for thousands of marchers was a four-story art installation that displayed four images and quotations of Martin Luther King Jr. .

The participants in Glenn Beck 's `` Restoring Honor '' rally paused as they walked toward the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial . Some stopped to have pictures taken with King as the backdrop .

As recordings of King 's booming baritone filled the air , some of the Beck followers laughed and others booed . Some looked for someone to argue their case that King 's dream was passé , no more relevant to today 's politics than the race to the moon .

Michael Murphy , an artist from Georgia , created a four-story structure that celebrates King to honor King 's spirit and to counter the rallies by Beck and the Rev. Al Sharpton .

Four images , each with passages from King 's speeches , can be viewed from different perspectives .

Rev. Jim Wallis , speaking at a celebration of King 's life near the temporary art installation , acknowledged the `` angry discussions about the legacy of this man . '' A Beck marcher ran up to someone admiring the art and called out : `` We 'll be free again -- in November . ''

America 's political atmosphere at the time of the Beck and Sharpton rallies sometimes seems more toxic than the politics of 1963 . Beck has likened the policies of President Obama 's administration to those of Adolf Hitler and calls him a communist . Some in the Tea Party movement have questioned Obama 's patriotism and insinuated that he is an al Qaeda sympathizer .

In fact , the political climate surrounding King 's 1963 march was tougher . But King and the civil rights movement provided a moral vision that made it possible for the U.S. to find a way out of those ugly times .

The summer of 1963 produced as much conflict as almost any other year in American history . After King 's Birmingham , Alabama , campaign , more than 2,000 demonstrations broke out across the nation . More than 50,000 people were jailed . Many protests got violent . NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississippi . Protesters in Danville , Virginia , got pummeled within an inch of their lives , then subjected to persecution . The governor of Maryland declared martial law in Cambridge .

That summer , the civil rights campaigners moved north . Protests in New York , Philadelphia , Newark , Chicago and San Francisco took a dramatic turn toward incivility . Frustrated by years of inattention , renters in Philly dumped mountains of garbage in front of slumlords ' suburban homes .

Malcolm X sneered at Jews . `` You have n't got no time to cry no tears for no Jews , '' he called out at the Harlem Unity Rally . `` Why , they only killed 6 million Jews . ''

Meanwhile , segregationists were pushing constitutional amendments to overturn the principle of `` one man , one vote , '' to give state judges power over the Supreme Court and to give states the power to amend the Constitution without any federal involvement . George Wallace and Ross Barnett led an effort to throw the 1964 presidential election into the House so that Dixie could determine the next president .

Radical groups of all stripes wanted to use the March to make history . The Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan vowed to round up 10,000 or more white supremacists with the hope of inciting a conflict that would doom the civil rights cause . Segregationists in Congress even expressed hope that violence would ruin the march and the civil rights movement .

Leftists , meanwhile , threatened to occupy the offices of segregationists on Capitol Hill and vent their anger at the White House and Justice Department . The Black Muslims denounced `` the Farce on Washington , '' and Malcolm X came to razz the marchers . And on the edges of the movement , Communists tried to work their way into the march .

But amid what Garry Wills called America 's second Civil War , the civil rights movement embraced the idea that the best way to gain rights was to appeal to everyone 's hearts and meet `` physical force with soul force , '' as King put it .

King himself did not always understand the imperative of love or nonviolence . As a young man , he later acknowledged , he hated whites . And he did not understand nonviolence right away either . In the early days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott , he hired men to guard his house with guns .

By the time of the March , King understood that America could be changed only by winning over the other side . King understood that fighting violence with violence created only more violence . He knew that , whatever happened , blacks and whites needed to live together .

One marcher who `` won '' a train ticket to the March on Washington for his courageous conduct in demonstrations , later remembered the time racist thugs threw beer mugs at marchers in Charleston . His first reaction , Harvey Jones told me , was to stiffen up to be ready for a fight . King planted himself in front of Jones . `` If you do n't think you can respond nonviolently , maybe you should leave the march , '' King said . He calmed down .

King 's cause was moral , universal . He sought nothing for his people that other people did not enjoy . He wanted access to lunch counters and bus stations , the right to vote , equal access to schools , protection against mobs , fair police treatment .

And King was willing -- and insisted that his followers be willing -- to suffer for the cause .

Everyone remembers King 's speech at the March for four words : `` I have a dream . '' And , in fact , those words were transcendent . They conjured up images of a better world . Those words connected the ordinary struggles of the movement -- brutally hard work rewarded with beatings and jail -- with the glorious possibilities of equality .

But even more important were four other words : `` Unearned suffering is redemptive . '' King warned that even the most innocent and decent people would continue to suffer . Oppressors never yield power willingly . They fight back viciously . So buck up . Move ahead , first into the swinging batons and electric cattle prods and water cannons . Because there is no other way .

King could issue that challenge . He could be that blunt and honest because of the universal values he espoused . They were not fighting for an earmark or a tax cut , loopholes from an EPA regulations , a Department of Education grant or a Fannie Mae subsidy . They were fighting for their lives .

It all seems so clear now , but it was n't back in 1963 , not for most people anyway . But the existence of this massive movement , with hundreds of thousands of ordinary people willing to put their bodies on the line with nonviolence and even love , created real light in what could have been the darkest of times .

Who 's our King ? Who is drawing on the power of soul force ? Who is appealing to his bitterest enemies ? Who today is pointing to a new age of cooperation and brotherhood ?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Charles Euchner .

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People arriving for the Glenn Beck rally were greeted by a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. .

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Charles Euchner says King 's message is still relevant today

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He says King had to confront a much more rancorous political climate than today 's

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King overcame oppression through nonviolence , he says ; where is today 's King ?